Data Sources & Attribution

Primary Sources

• New York Lottery — Scratch-Off Games — Official list of active games, ticket prices, top prizes, and prizes remaining. Refreshed daily.
• NY Open Data — Lottery Instant Games Settlements — Per-retailer instant game sales and prizes paid. Drives the Store Smart Score and store performance pages.
• NY Open Data — Active Lottery Retailers — Official list of ~18,000 licensed NY Lottery retailers, their addresses, and chain codes.
• NY Lottery End-of-Game PDF Report — Used to determine when games end and to cross-check total tickets printed.
• U.S. Census Bureau ACS 5-Year Estimates — Used only to contextualize retailer neighborhoods (median income, population); never to target individuals.

Refresh Cadence

Game and prize data refreshes twice daily: once at roughly 9:45 AM ET (after the NY Lottery's overnight prize update) and again at roughly 2:00 PM ET. Store and retailer data refreshes on the morning run. All timestamps on the site use America/New_York.

Smart Score Methodology (Summary)

The Smart Score is a 0–100 composite built from seven core factors — value, edge, density, playability, momentum, confidence, and upside — plus 20+ secondary factors used in ensemble ranking. Factor weights are recalibrated through walk-forward cross-validation against historical outcomes; online learning fine-tunes weights within a 7-day rolling window and a 2σ safety gate blocks unstable updates.

Full technical detail, including formulas and the auto-research pipeline, is on the methodology page.

What We Don't Do

• We do not sell or resell tickets.
• We do not scrape individual retailer POS systems — all store-level data comes from NY's public Open Data feeds.
• We do not claim a specific ticket is a guaranteed winner. Scratch-off outcomes are independent random events; Smart Score measures ticket value, not future luck.
• We are not affiliated with or endorsed by the New York State Gaming Commission or the New York Lottery.

Corrections & Contact

If you spot a number that looks wrong, open an issue on our GitHub repository or mention it in the community Discord. All algorithm changes are logged.